Have you been following the latest Sinclair Broadcasting flap? In case you haven't been, here's the deal:
--Sinclair Broadcasting owns 62 television stations in 39 broadcast markets, reaching about 25% of the total US population;
--They are a very (politically) conservative company, and back in April, they ordered their ABC affiliates not to air the edition of "Nightline" in which Ted Koppel read the names of the US servicemembers killed in Iraq;
--They are devoting an hour of airtime, sometime in the next two weeks (i.e., before the election) to a "documentary" against John Kerry.

I put "documentary" in quotes because, well, it isn't really a documentary. I haven't seen it, but all signs point to it being a partisan political diatribe. What are the signs, you may ask?
--The documentary's title: Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal;
--the description on the film's website as "A documentary exposing John Kerry's record of betrayal";
--the film's producer, Carlton Sherwood.

That last link above is to a bio of Sherwood. The bio mentions that Sherwood, who has won the Pulitzer and Peabody awards -- big stuff -- has worked for the Washington Times, which is owned by the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

What the bio doesn't mention is that Sherwood wrote a book in 1991 (published by arch-conservative publishing house Regnery) entitled "Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon." The book concludes that Moon and the Moonies were "victims of the worst kind of religious prejudice and racial bigotry this country has witnessed in over a century."

Sherwood's Stolen Honor bio also doesn't mention that, according to Frontline, the Unification Church made changes in Sherwood's book's manuscript before publication, something that is anathema to real self-respecting journalists. Incidentally, the Moon organization also agreed to purchase 100,000 copies of Inquisition.

So, laying aside the question of whether Carlton Sherwood can be bought (as he apparently can), is this "documentary" factual? As the Magic Eight Ball would put it, signs point to no.

An organization calling itself "POWs For Truth" is the sponsor of the documentary -- the documentary's website refers to it being "released" by POWs For Truth. A press release archived on StolenHonor.com trumpets the announcement of POWs For Truth merging with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; the two organizations formed a new organization called "Swift Vets and POWs for Truth." Now, don't forget that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is a wholly discredited organization; if any of their claims of fact have held up to outside scrutiny, I certainly don't know about it. They are, to borrow a phrase from Jon Stewart, partisan hacks. Oh yes, and bald-faced liars.

So, we have what is basically an hourlong Swift Boat ad, produced by a Moonie apologist who can be bought, airing on 62 television stations on the eve of the election.

This is the real meat of what I'm saying here: How could this possibly be legal? Airing an hourlong partisan political broadcast, in prime time, just before the election? Sinclair is claiming that it's a "special news event", and thus exempt to the FCC's equal-time rules. This appears to be electioneering of the worst and most virulent variety.

It also seems to violate the "public interest" part of the FCC rules. This isn't cable or satellite we're talking about; these 62 stations are terrestrial-broadcast. Sinclair doesn't own the airwaves here...the people of the United States of America do. And we allow private companies, like Sinclair, to use them to serve our interests. The Federal Communications Commission is our proxy, and they license stations to broadcast as long as they "serve the public interest." Don't forget: As long as commercial companies are using our airwaves, our interests must be served. Even former FCC chair Reed Hundt agrees, in this letter posted on Talking Points Memo:

since television was invented, Congress and its delegated agency, the Federal Communications Commision, together have passed laws and regulations to ensure that broadcast television stations provide reasonably accurate, balanced, and fair coverage of major Presidential and Congressional candidates. These obligations are reflected in specific provisions relating to rights to buy advertising time, bans against the gift of advertising time, rights to reply to opponents, and various other specific means of accomplishing the goal of balance and fairness. The various rules are part of a tradition well known to broadcasters an honored by almost all of them. This tradition is embodied in the commitment of the broadcasters to show the conventions and the debates.

Part of this tradition is that broadcasters do not show propaganda for any candidate, no matter how much a station owner may personally favor one or dislike the other. Broadcasters understand that they have a special and conditional role in public discourse. They received their licenses from the public -- licenses to use airwaves that, for instance, cellular companies bought in auctions -- for free, and one condition is the obligation to help us hold a fair and free election. The Supreme Court has routinely upheld this "public interest" obligation. Virtually all broadcasters understand and honor it.

Sinclair has a different idea, and a wrong one in my view. If Sinclair wants to disseminate propaganda, it should buy a printing press, or create a web site. These other media have no conditions on their publication of points of view. This is the law, and it should be honored. In fact, if the FCC had any sense of its responsibility as a steward of fair elections its chairman now would express exactly what I am writing to you here.

Current FCC chair Michael Powell ducked the issue, saying ""Don't look to us to block the airing of a program. . .I don't know of any precedent in which the commission could do that." Hundt's response:

Chairman Powell instead pretends that he has been asked to bar the showing of the propaganda -- which no one has asked him to do. His remarks are so far off the point, and he is so intelligent, that one must conclude that he knows what he is doing and intends the result -- tacit and plain encouragement of the use of the Sinclair airwaves to pursue a smear campaign. No broadcast group in the history of America has ever committed an hour to smearing a presidential candidate, and no FCC chairman before this one would have reacted with equanimity to this radical step down in broadcasting ethics. . .

In any event, the current FCC Chairman is no stranger to the White House. They know who he is and what he says. So the White House can and should remind the Chairman of his duties and express publicly its expectation that broadcasters will honor our democracy by playing fair. This is what should happen. If it is not a prediction of what will happen, that's a sign of how far out of the mainstream the current Administration is.

Agreed. No one is asking that Sinclair be barred from showing the film -- doing so would unquestionably constitute an illegal prior restraint. What the FCC should do, however, is very carefully renew the broadcast licenses of Sinclair-owned stations when they come before the commission for renewal. Our airwaves are being used by a company who is violating our public interest, and they must be held accountable.

Don't forget, either, that Sinclair's conduct during this entire brouhaha has been nothing short of appalling. When the predictable storm of outrage first hit two weeks ago or so, Sinclair VP of Corporate Relations (and the guy who gives their on-air conservative commentaries) Mark Hyman said that the networks were ignoring anti-Kerry groups. He said on CNN that the networks "chose to suppress them. They chose to ignore them. They are acting like Holocaust deniers, pretending these men don't exist." The Anti-Defamation League justifiably took exception to his comments, calling them "grossly inappropriate" and "deeply troubling", noting that "usage of Holocaust imagery to score political points at any time is unacceptable."

Sinclair Washington bureau chief Jon Lieberman gave an interview to David Folkenflik of the Baltimore Sun on Sunday in which he criticized the company's stance. As reported in the Sun on Monday:

"It's biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election," said Jon Leiberman, Sinclair's lead political reporter for more than a year. "For me, it's not about right or left -- it's about what's right or wrong in news coverage this close to an election."

For his principled stand of journalistic values such as credibility and fairness, Lieberman was unceremoniously fired yesterday.

Wall Street is taking notice: Sinclair stock has fallen 12% since this story broke a week and a half ago. Analysts from both Lehman Brothers and J.P. Morgan have downgraded the company. And, the company is facing not only boycotts of its advertisers, but at least two shareholder lawsuits...one is charging the company with equal-time violations, one is alleging insider trading. The New York state comptroller sent a letter to the company, expressing concern about the company's performance and what it may mean for New York's pension fund.

Matthew Yglesias calls l'affaire Sinclair just one piece of evidence

of what one might call the creeping Putinization of American life (the Sinclair incident, the threatening letter to Rock The Vote, the specter of the top official in the House of Representatives making totally baseless charges of criminal conduct against a major financier of the political opposition [shades of Mikhail Khodorovsky], the increasing evidence that the 'terror alert' system is nothing more than a political prop, the 'torture memo' asserting that the president is above the law, the imposition of rigid discipline on the congress, the abuse of the conference committee procedure, the ability of the administration to lie to congress without penalty, the exclusion of non-supporters from Bush's public appearances, etc.)

You know, he's right. Our democracy -- one of the signal things that we use to define ourselves as Americans -- is in grave danger. And we must fervently work to prevent further shameless power grabs. You'll have your chance, two weeks from today. I hope you use it.

ADDENDUM: Now this press release is interesting. Is Sinclair backing down?

ANOTHER ADDENDUM: Sinclair's press release says that "Contrary to numerous inaccurate political and press accounts, the Sinclair stations will not be airing the documentary 'Stolen Honor' in its entirety. At no time did Sinclair ever publicly announce that it intended to do so." That's fine, but this new assertion contradicts the October 9 LA Times article that started the whole imbroglio, and the company has never, to my knowledge, denied it. In fact, the LAT's sources were given as "network and station executives familiar with the plan." And the article goes on to say that Sinclair refused comment.

Don't you think that if Sinclair never intended to show "Stolen Honor", they would have said so in a heartbeat when this potentially (and ultimately) damaging story came out a week and a half ago? They're weaseling here.

Josh Marshall has a nice response to Sinclair's Tuesday press release. He notes that "some of the biased lefty rags who published this calumny" were the newspaper TV listings. Like this one.

He goes on to say, putting it better than I could, that:

As nearly as I can figure it, from their press release, what Sinclair now plans is an hourlong special which is based largely on the material from 'Stolen Honor' but also frames this in a larger 'context' of liberal media bias and how bad it is that all the other networks haven't run 'Stolen Honor' and presumably what a rough shake Sinclair's gotten for trying to run 'Stolen Honor.' That's balance.

Read the press release and tell me if you think I've got it wrong. Don't miss CEO David Smith's comments toward the bottom.

That, to put it mildly, doesn't cut it.

Sinclair is trying to wriggle and whine out of the mess they've gotten themselves into by violating their journalistic responsibilities, and public responsibilities as holders of public broadcast licenses, by running an anti-Kerry infomercial as a news show just ten days before the election.

Smith has classified the outrage and actions Sinclair's decision has spawned as so many "misguided attempts by a small but vocal minority."

He doesn't mention, of course, that that 'small but vocal minority' includes the man whom until yesterday Sinclair considered a respectable enough fellow to have as their DC Bureau chief.

Everything we've seen from the Sinclair folks -- and, by this, I mean the executives, not its many employees around the country -- over the last ten days marks them as reckless clowns, with brass knuckles and pretty poor business men to boot.

The logical interpretation of what's happened in the last week is that they believe they'll make up for whatever losses they sustain through regulatory, or rather deregulatory, payback after the election. Their barely disguised motives have been most clearly evidenced by their manner of using their offer of 'equal time' to Kerry as a form of gleefully public extortion.

In theory, what Sinclair now describes could be a fair-minded look at Kerry's time as a Vietnam war protestor. But look who we're dealing with? Based on their track record, their claims don't give me a lot of confidence. Their latest gambit seems like a prettied up attempt at the same smear by another name.

I'd love to be proven wrong. But I'm not too hopeful.

And, also on Talking Points Memo (which has been en fuego re: Sinclair and some other stories lately), former FCC chair Reed Hundt responds to Sinclair's press release:

First, by backing away from their previous plan, Sinclair is effectively admitting either that their advertisers want them to maintain the broadcaster tradition of providing balanced and neutral coverage of elections ( because without that advertisers risk viewer unhappiness being directed at the advertisers), or that Sinclair in fact may face many regulatory problems in the event that it violates that tradition. That much at least is progress toward some recognition of reality at Sinclair.

Second, Sinclair calling their proposed new show news does not make it news. What in fact one may think of their broadcast can and should be judged after the fact. But since Sinclair's relationship to objectivity, as reflected in its press statements, is rather attenuated, one should suppose that Sinclair's new show may well be judged just as much a smear as the so-called documentary they apparently will no longer run. As a result, advertisers have just as much ground to be wary, and the FCC just as much basis to do its duty, and Sinclair just as much reason to feel the opprobrium of an aroused public, as was the case before this current and suspicious effort to disguise the true intentions of Sinclair.

(My emphasis added to the Hundt letter above.)

I would love for Friday's broadcast to be nothing more than an incisive examination of the relationships between the press, documentary filmmakers, and our political system. I would love for it to dig deep and explore how media frenzies get started, sustain themselves, and ultimately sway voters. But Sinclair's actions have proven to be, as I've stated above, blatantly partisan, disingenuous, and full of contempt for both time-honored journalistic values and our political process. So I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Comments

[alan taylor]

Excellent encapsulation - really nicely done. Thanks!

[lex icon]

Bah. Kerry lovers won't watch it any more than Bush lovers watched Michael Moore's "documentary." The undecideds are too stupid to use a television, so they won't see it, either.

[Vidiot]

lex icon, so this means that all TV political advertising is just wasted money? The candidates, parties, and outside groups obviously don't agree.

And while I don't agree with some of Moore's conclusions, I found no significant factual errors in his film. Nor did he drink the Kool-Aid, as Carlton Sherwood seems to have done.

[arto]

Interesting facts:

Nearly 100 advertisers are joining in on boycotting Sinclair broadcasting.

The shareholders are threatening to sue, seeing as how the stock price has already taken a giant nosedive, and airing the documentary could concievably cause the FCC to deny licence renewals for Sinclair stations.

[Vidiot]

Good points, arto.

I see that their stock is going back up -- but is still incredibly volatile since they've apparently agreed not to show the whole thing. Crappy journalists and crappy businessmen; who'da thunk they went hand in hand?

[brittney]

Nice fucking post, friend.